The ancient Greeks called these snow-capped peaks standing on the equator, the Moon Mountains.
Peaks are almost always hidden by clouds, and only when changeable winds tear off the veil of fog, snow tops appear in all splendor.
Researcher Henry Morton Stanley reached the ridge, a visit which the Europeans had no written testimonies, in 1888. He noted that over 300 days a year the peaks are hidden like a cloud bound to them, when it recedes, a stunning view opens.
Rwenzori means "one who makes rain". These mountains extend almost 96 kilometers along the border between Uganda and Zaire, 48 kilometers north of the equator. With half a dozen mountains with glaciers rest against the sky in the heart of the massif. Margherita, one of the peaks of Mount Stanley, rises to 5110 meters above sea level.
Luigi di Savoia, Duke of Abruzzi, was the first who in 1906 measured, mapped and photographed the mountains. However, the vague idea of their existence has a more ancient history. Over 2000 years ago, Greek geographers talked about mysterious mountains, whose snow and streams feed the Nile. Aristotle described the Silver Mountains in Central Africa in the IV century BC, and Ptolemy called them the Lunar Mountains.
Stone that sparkles
When the fog dissipates, it seems that the peaks shine brighter than the snow. The mountains themselves sparkle and sparkle, as the mica shale is over the granite - a sparkling coarse-grained mineral formed under the influence of heat and pressure under mighty tremors. Rwenzori, unlike Kilimanjaro and the mountains of Kenya, were not formed under the influence of volcanic forces. A huge layer of earth rose and ascended to the sky in the course of a drama that took place less than 10 million years ago. That's why the mountains have pointed peaks.
The most amazing sight in Ruwenzori is vegetation, which creates an ominous and strange landscape on the mountain slopes. Life here is determined primarily by the weather. In the wettest month of November, 510 millimeters of precipitation falls here.
As a result, everything literally grows to monstrous proportions. In the woods there is a raw smell of mushrooms, underfoot lie carpets of moss, and water does not cease to drip. Lobelia here is simply fantastic. They are 3 times higher than human height and give long panicles, like yucca. The creeper grows to the top of the telegraph poles, and the short heather wags by 12 meters.
Such remarkable specimens grow mainly above the boundary of arboreal vegetation. It is the lack of competition from the trees that helps them reach such phenomenal sizes. Another factor is acid soil, rich in humus, in which live earthworms the size of a good snake.
With this equatorial country of fairy tales all sorts of superstitions are connected. People of the Banandi people believe that there are spirits in Ruwenzori that begin to roll stones to anyone who tries to enter their domain. The naturalist, who cut off the inflorescence of the giant lobelia, will find that none of his porters, even under pain of death, will not only bear, but will not even touch him. A rare chameleon, one of the most outlandish inhabitants of the country, locals are afraid of as a bad sign.
There are representatives of the fauna here. Birds of the nectar are drinking nectar from giant lobels here. Black and white thick-bodied monkeys live high in the branches, feed on leaves and rarely descend to the ground, and leopards scour through the woods almost to the border of the snows. Here there is also an absolutely unusual animal - a wood daman, resembling a rabbit and yelling, like a guinea pig, but not related to any of them. The nails of a daman are like a hoof, not the usual claws; His closest kinsman is an elephant, and not any other animal. Elephants themselves are also found in Ruwenzori, although they live only at the base of the mountains.